Subway ride.

The other night I was coming home on the subway on a crowded train and was reading a (used) hardcover copy of "The Fabulous Sylvester", and I noticed this (black) woman sitting in front of me looking up at the book.

"Oh," I was like, "You a fan or something?"

"Oh no," she was like, "Just looking," and she totally continued to read the quotes and stuff on the back cover.

When it got to my stop, I opened up my overcoat and slid the book into this very convenient side pocket, where the book just fit but wasn't visible when you closed the coat.

"Isn't that great?", she was like. "They don't put pockets like that on coats anymore!"

And I agreed, and told her I loved it, and often wished all my coats had pockets like that.

Xmas swap!

So, at this party I went to with the sister of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, she and a law school classmate of hers had brought a big sack of presents from regifting and the dollar store for a party game...

I ended up with this handy soup container with a screw-on lid and a portable spoon that you can tuck inside the lid, which was pretty amazing, since just earlier that week I was packing up a lunch for school and had thought that I wish I had something like that, so I could take some of my potato-leek soup to school for lunch.

Her one (black) law school classmate who also got the presents said they each spent less than $10 to put the presents together, and that she got the idea from her family; her grandma shops clearance all year round, and then Christmas she brings this sack of kick-ass presents that everyone fights over, and only cost her like $20 for the whole sack.

"I don't plan that far ahead, though", she laughed.

Memories of a (British) person: Christmas.

So, the other day I was talking with the sister of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, about her plans for the holidays back in England (she's going back for a couple weeks).

I asked if her (British) mom had converted to Islam when she married her dad, but she said no, and in any case they always celebrated Christmas, even when they lived in the Sudan: they used to have this plastic Christmas tree they would pull out and set up, and they would give each other presents in the immediate family, and on Christmas day they would have their (Muslim) extended family over for a party and dancing.

Memory: British English.

One time I was talking with my one British friend (I think this summer), and I mentioned something about "It's so hot", and he was like, "What's so difficult about it?"

He understood the way I said "hot" as "hard"! Honestly. I repeated the word for him, and his first reaction was always to hear it as "hard".

Gamblin'.

The other day at my lesson with the lawyer who's learning Greek, in our chit-chat before the lesson the subject of slot machines somehow came up, and I told the story of how there's bars in the city where they have them "For Entertainment Purposes Only", but the regulars play them and the bartender marks what they get, and then every once in a while pays them out from a till behind the counter.

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you that because you're a lawyer who works for the city, though," I was like.

"Oh no, it's okay," he was like, and then told me how for years there was this one building you'd pass by on the elevated train, and if you looked in this one window just before downtown, you'd always see a group of people playing cards, no matter what time of day.

A bar story: Serbian restaurant, with jazz.

The other Monday night I was out and I popped into this Serbian restaurant/bar, which had almost no-one at tables but a pretty packed bar, and I went down towards the end to an open seat, and asked this gaunt-looking older (white) guy if I could sit down, and he shrugged and gestured to sit.

Then, another older (white) guy came out of the bathroom and sat down by his half-finished beer on the other side of me, and the 2 started to talk across me.

Oddly, later it was jazz night at the Serbian restaurants - traditional jazz, no Serbian players - and the 2 guys were 2 aging jazz musicians from the city.

After talking about their colonoscopies coming up, they began talking about old jazz bars in the city that had closed down.

"Remember that one place near [one street] and [another street]?", the one was like. "The place with the tree?"

"Oh yeah, that place with the tree," the other was like, "I can't remember the name of that place for the life of me, though."

After a story from one about his brother subbing in from him once in the late 60s, and another about some drummer with cirrhosis (sp.?) of the liver, the one was like, "Man, doesn't that all seem just like yesterday."

"Yes, it certainly does," the other was like.

No more excerpts.

Oops - mis-estimated the excerpts before I typed them out.

I love how 2nd-wave feminists speak their truth so clearly. And so much of it is true!